Oops! Two other posters noticed the rash of deletions, and had the nerve to question the Mighty Sal

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chunk: Hi,If you believe in freedom of expression why are you editing peoples posts and deleting peoples accounts and posts?

/confused

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rrf:Sal quoting from John Stuart Mill

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But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. …

You know, Sal, as you pretend to honor Mill while concurrently editting and deleting the comments of dissenting posters, you would do well to remember Psalm 101:7 which says "No one who practices deceit will dwell in my house; no one whospeaks falsely will stand in my presence."

Sal deleted these from the Board Comments as soon as he saw them, but forgot that they are still visible in the Recycle bin.

Hermagoras' posts (see above) got waxed too.

Looks like Sal has a mini palace revolt on his hands. :p

How old is Sal anyway? He seems like such a child.

--------------"I am not currently proving that objective morality is true. I did that a long time ago and you missed it." -- StephenB

especially when the major dialogue opponent refuses to engage in any forum he does not control.

I limit where I will participate, but I know of some open fora that I don't control that I would trust for a discussion, the USENET newsgroup talk.origins being the most prominent. I have tried to treat discussions where I am moderator with care; you may have noticed that any post that I edit automatically is labeled as having been edited by me. So far, my changes to content of comments has been limited to fixing up broken URLs and the like. Spam gets deleted on sight, and banned people's comments are likewise deleted as they are recognized.

Sal Cordova himself has previously used the fora here to criticize things I've written, and his posts, filled with falsehoods as they are, remain unmolested here.

Cordova:

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His posts violated forum rules and thus were free game for mutilation and humiliation and pranking. It was marginally entertaining.

I have found that Sal's comments require no further changes to be humiliating. Of course, humiliation requires a capacity to experience shame, and it appears that many antievolutionists have a conscience-ectomy at the same time they get their moral compass degaussed, depriving them of a range of human experience that would be good for them.

Oh well. Someone here once had as an avatar a picture (now that I think of it, it might have been either Penn or Teller) pointing angrily and saying 'shut the feck up'. and i loved it. and now it is gone. probably one of those darwinist dirty tricks davetard is wanting to chronicle.

--------------You're obviously illiterate as hell. Peach, bro.-FtK

Finding something hard to believe based on the evidence, is science.-JoeG

especially when the major dialogue opponent refuses to engage in any forum he does not control.

I limit where I will participate, but I know of some open fora that I don't control that I would trust for a discussion, the USENET newsgroup talk.origins being the most prominent. I have tried to treat discussions where I am moderator with care; you may have noticed that any post that I edit automatically is labeled as having been edited by me. So far, my changes to content of comments has been limited to fixing up broken URLs and the like. Spam gets deleted on sight, and banned people's comments are likewise deleted as they are recognized.

Sal Cordova himself has previously used the fora here to criticize things I've written, and his posts, filled with falsehoods as they are, remain unmolested here.

Cordova:

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His posts violated forum rules and thus were free game for mutilation and humiliation and pranking. It was marginally entertaining.

I have found that Sal's comments require no further changes to be humiliating. Of course, humiliation requires a capacity to experience shame, and it appears that many antievolutionists have a conscience-ectomy at the same time they get their moral compass degaussed, depriving them of a range of human experience that would be good for them.

We all limit where we will participate. What Sal has done is egregious on many, many levels, as I am pointing out:

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scordova"

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reciprocal opportunity is Tiggy setting up his own website and seeing who wants to listen to him and engage his arguments

Invitation to the public to participate is dropped. People interested in sophistry rather than science are shown the door. You can set up your forum the way you want.

I have prominently posted critical objections to my ideas by qualified scientists like Dr. Cheesman and Dr. Jellison in this forum. Tiggy couldn't even solve a simple algebra problem yet claimed years of grad level math. Heck,the problem was hardly arithmetic!

His posts violated forum rules and thus were free game for mutilation and humiliation and pranking. It was marginally entertaining.

Not really.

Show me one respectable board where the moderator plays by your rules (mutilating posts and only acknowledging such mutilation when caught). It's unethical behavior, pure and simple. Besides, Tiggy's posts were not ad hominem. They questioned your behavior, not your person. If anything was off-topic, your algebra problem was. Why should Tiggy be your performing monkey when you won't even answer his on-topic questions and when you ask him questions in a thread to which you will not admit him entry?

--------------"I am not currently proving that objective morality is true. I did that a long time ago and you missed it." -- StephenB

Please join my thread The Rhetoric of Moderation over at Young Cosmos. I do not believe Sal can remove items from this thread without my permission, unless he violates his own stated rules. (Well, I mean violates them worse than he usually does.)

--------------"I am not currently proving that objective morality is true. I did that a long time ago and you missed it." -- StephenB

Oh well. Someone here once had as an avatar a picture (now that I think of it, it might have been either Penn or Teller) pointing angrily and saying 'shut the feck up'. and i loved it. and now it is gone. probably one of those darwinist dirty tricks davetard is wanting to chronicle.

That was Louis' previous avatar, which conveyed that he not only didn't suffer fools gladly, but gladly made fools to suffer. Flat Feynman seems a tad less hostile, with a bit more twinkle.

--------------Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be.

"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."- David Foster Wallace

"Hereâ€™s a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down."- Barry Arrington

Addendum: I started this thread and so I decide who gets invited. And I say everybody should come here (Sal included), discuss the rhetoric of moderation, and nobody on this thread should be moved to the Recycle Bin. Those are my rules.

Sal responds:

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I will do my best to honor them.

WTF? How hard is it to honor? Just don't kick anybody off.

--------------"I am not currently proving that objective morality is true. I did that a long time ago and you missed it." -- StephenB

I do not believe Sal can remove items from this thread without my permission,

Oh, to be young and naive again...

:p

he he.

Meanwhile, Sal responds:

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Regarding moderation and rhetoric.

One rhetorical move is:

1. Heckle and troll an otherwise sound argument

2. The Heckler gets himself tossed

3. The Heckler claims his arguments were so powerful and could not be dealt with therefore the orthodoxy had to resort to Draconian measures

Tiggy's rhetorical maneuvers were excellent tactics for shutting down debate. It is known as "the nuclear option".

Contrast the treatment I gave Tiggy versus the critiques of my ideas prominently posted and highlighted in this forum

My critics like Dr. Cheesman and Dr. Jellison have forced several reversals and retractions of ideas I and other YECs have held. I and Barry have publicly acknowledge them.

I removed Tiggy because Heckler's can destroy a good rhetorical exchange. The ARN Rule 9 was to allow one-on-one or limited debate to take place and drive Hecklers from the fray.

I allowed some Heckling by Tiggy, but when a concerted spam attack was mounted on the forum last night, I decided enough was enough.

Sooooo, the bottom line. Good rhetorical exchanges need to allow order and exclusion.

Not hecklers shouting at each other. Heckling and shouting matches destroy interest level by the readers.

Finally, my absolute disdain for Tiggy's stupidity was showing, and that did not reflect well on me. When some loser like Tiggy claims to have grad level math and can't solve a high school algebra problem, I flip my lid. It's ok not to be able to solve a math problem. But for Tiggy to be claiming intellectual superiority when it's so obvious the guy is clueless, I quickly lose patience.

I think, "why the hell do I have to deal with such scum." It's better for my sanity to keep heckler out of my sight

To which I respond:

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I did not think Tiggy's questions were either stupid or answered. He asked about multiple confirming lines of evidence with respect to C14 data. In response, you quoted a 30 year old paper which has gotten almost no attention in the scholarly literature and asked him to prove his bona fides by solving an algebra problem. Further, you accused him of engaging in circular reasoning when he clearly was not.

You say he could not solve the problem. I say he did not, and that it was irrelevant.

Finally, you're right that your disdain "did not reflect well on [you]." Nor does this post. What kind of person talks of other people as "scum"?

--------------"I am not currently proving that objective morality is true. I did that a long time ago and you missed it." -- StephenB

I do not believe Sal can remove items from this thread without my permission,

Oh, to be young and naive again...

:p

he he.

Meanwhile, Sal responds:

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Regarding moderation and rhetoric.

One rhetorical move is:

1. Heckle and troll an otherwise sound argument

2. The Heckler gets himself tossed

3. The Heckler claims his arguments were so powerful and could not be dealt with therefore the orthodoxy had to resort to Draconian measures

Tiggy's rhetorical maneuvers were excellent tactics for shutting down debate. It is known as "the nuclear option".

Contrast the treatment I gave Tiggy versus the critiques of my ideas prominently posted and highlighted in this forum

My critics like Dr. Cheesman and Dr. Jellison have forced several reversals and retractions of ideas I and other YECs have held. I and Barry have publicly acknowledge them.

I removed Tiggy because Heckler's can destroy a good rhetorical exchange. The ARN Rule 9 was to allow one-on-one or limited debate to take place and drive Hecklers from the fray.

I allowed some Heckling by Tiggy, but when a concerted spam attack was mounted on the forum last night, I decided enough was enough.

Sooooo, the bottom line. Good rhetorical exchanges need to allow order and exclusion.

Not hecklers shouting at each other. Heckling and shouting matches destroy interest level by the readers.

Finally, my absolute disdain for Tiggy's stupidity was showing, and that did not reflect well on me. When some loser like Tiggy claims to have grad level math and can't solve a high school algebra problem, I flip my lid. It's ok not to be able to solve a math problem. But for Tiggy to be claiming intellectual superiority when it's so obvious the guy is clueless, I quickly lose patience.

I think, "why the hell do I have to deal with such scum." It's better for my sanity to keep heckler out of my sight

To which I respond:

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I did not think Tiggy's questions were either stupid or answered. He asked about multiple confirming lines of evidence with respect to C14 data. In response, you quoted a 30 year old paper which has gotten almost no attention in the scholarly literature and asked him to prove his bona fides by solving an algebra problem. Further, you accused him of engaging in circular reasoning when he clearly was not.

You say he could not solve the problem. I say he did not, and that it was irrelevant.

Finally, you're right that your disdain "did not reflect well on [you]." Nor does this post. What kind of person talks of other people as "scum"?

In general those kinds of words would get you moved to the Bathroom Wall, but this time I'm regarding them as a kind of involuntary yelp produced by running into the astonishingly dishonest Salvador Cordova. There is absolutely nothing I would put past that guy. I wouldn't feel a twinge of surprise If he just started writing approving comments under our names on his site.

I'm well aware from a rhetorical perspective the advantage the other side has in preying upon the lack of familiarity by the audience with the subject matter.

Then chunk complains I haven't convinced him. I ask if he even understands rate constants or read the papers. Attributing his lack of understanding to my inability to explain is infuriating. It does not reflect well on me when this button is pushed.

It would be like me spending two hours giving a mathematicl proof for something, and then someone casually saying, "I don't see your point." I then realize they didn't even understand the basics and are uwilling to even learn the basics before they offer reasoned critiques. I honestly thought to myself, "YOU RETARD, you complain I didn't explain myself well, when in fact it's your inability to understand the science."

I'm willing to help and teach, I'm uwilling to spoon feed. When I get objections from people demanding to be spoon fed, I'll happily shove the spoon down their throat. When I get that mad, it does not reflect well on me or this forum.

In contrast, someone willing to learn, who does not know anything, I'm willing to teach.

Let me just pause for a moment to say, what an a*****e.

Whew. I feel better.

Ok, now I, Hermagoras, respond:

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Wow. Condescend much? You have no idea how much I know or don't know about the issues.

As for your opponents generally on C14, they can't all be stupid -- unless my merely mentioning the overwhelming scientific consensus constitutes an illegitimate appeal to authority.

A gedanken experiment: If you submitted your graph in a paper to a real scientific journal, would they reject it because (a) they adhere to the Darwinian conspiracy, (b) they're "retards," (c ) they're embarrassed to be proven wrong by some young pup like yourself, or (d) your argument is wrong? Or would they just give up?

A final observation: Your violent fantasies are disturbing. If you're really worried about your sanity, as you implied earlier, you should consider whether running a contentious forum is a good idea for you.

--------------"I am not currently proving that objective morality is true. I did that a long time ago and you missed it." -- StephenB

scordova wrote: 3. The Heckler claims his arguments were so powerful and could not be dealt with therefore the orthodoxy had to resort to Draconian measures

Or perhaps the Hecklers arguments were so powerful and could not be dealt with that the orthodoxy had to resort to Draconian measures. Tiggy raised some very interesting points that I was eager to see discussed. Your response was to edit, move/hide, and avoid questions. Very disappointing.

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I think, "why the hell do I have to deal with such scum." It's better for my sanity to keep heckler out of my sight.

Sal, you put yourself out there in the public eye in the Evolution vs creation controversy. You speak in public, you blog in public, you even wade into public forums like Scienceblogs and the Sci Phi Show. You positively gush when someone acknowledges seeing you on C-SPAN. Now, all of a sudden, we are supposed to believe you are some sensitive flower that withers under heat? I don't buy it. The only difference as far as I can tell between this forum and others that you participate is that this is your forum where you can't walk away when the questions get too tough, but you can wield the tools of moderation to ensure that someone who disagrees with you doesn't get a fair hearing.

--------------It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)

Wow. Condescend much? You have no idea how much I know or don't know about the issues.

As for your opponents generally on C14, they can't all be stupid -- unless my merely mentioning the overwhelming scientific consensus constitutes an illegitimate appeal to authority.

A gedanken experiment: If you submitted your graph in a paper to a real scientific journal, would they reject it because (a) they adhere to the Darwinian conspiracy, (b) they're "retards," (c ) they're embarrassed to be proven wrong by some young pup like yourself, or (d) your argument is wrong? Or would they just give up?

A final observation: Your violent fantasies are disturbing. If you're really worried about your sanity, as you implied earlier, you should consider whether running a contentious forum is a good idea for you.

Wow. Condescend much? You have no idea how much I know or don't know about the issues.

As for your opponents generally on C14, they can't all be stupid -- unless my merely mentioning the overwhelming scientific consensus constitutes an illegitimate appeal to authority.

A gedanken experiment: If you submitted your graph in a paper to a real scientific journal, would they reject it because (a) they adhere to the Darwinian conspiracy, (b) they're "retards," (c ) they're embarrassed to be proven wrong by some young pup like yourself, or (d) your argument is wrong? Or would they just give up?

A final observation: Your violent fantasies are disturbing. If you're really worried about your sanity, as you implied earlier, you should consider whether running a contentious forum is a good idea for you.

Again with the Bender. You're taking one sentence out of a 33 year old letter to Nature that has had virtually no impact. Google Scholar has it cited 5 times, and 2 of those cites are by creationists: Brown and Gish. So I'd say its impact is virtually nil.

Why? Perhaps because Bada, who is the target of Bender's critique, gave a devastating reply in the same issue. (This is not cited by Brown. I wonder why?) Bada's response begins:

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Bender's review of my work is both inaccurate and incomplete. He has not cited two of my publications dealing with aspartic acid racemisation dating. (Although one paper was only recently published. I sent Bender a preprint the first or this year when he informed me he was writing a review.) In those articles I show that after ‘calibrating' the amino acid racemisation reactions using a radiocarbon dated bone, it is then possible to date other bones from the same site, which are either too old or too small for radiocarbon dating. The only assumption in this approach is that the average temperature experienced by the calibration sample is representative of the average temperature experienced by the other sample. Ages thus deduced are in good agreement with radiocarbon ages determined on the same samples.

No wonder nobody took Bender's critique seriously since then. Meanwhile Brown quotes one sentence as though it proves something and you quote indirectly (via Brown) rather than from the original paper. If you'd read the original, as I have, you'd see that it was dispatched immediately.

--------------"I am not currently proving that objective morality is true. I did that a long time ago and you missed it." -- StephenB

About Bender (now at Princeton). He seems like a fine scientist. Note that he's not published any rebuttal of Bada since 1974. So if his 1974 critique was so great, why hasn't he picked up on it? He provides the answer in his final paragraph:

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Their findings, and the fact that reasonable ages and temperatures are sometimes obtained, indicates that the method has potential. It clearly faces many basic problems, however, and in my opinion no palaeoclinatic or geochronological inferences should be drawn from racemisation data until the basic geochemistry is thoroughly understood and the bases or the method firmly established.

Since then, of course, the geochemistry has advanced considerably. Bender, as a major geochemist, has apparently not seen fit to attack the dating method since 1974. Which suggests that quoting that 1974 paper (indirectly, via Brown) as support of anything today is not really going to solve anything.

Are you saying he's some sort of a coward or co-conspirator? Or perhaps a "retard"? Or, maybe, you know, "scum"?

--------------"I am not currently proving that objective morality is true. I did that a long time ago and you missed it." -- StephenB

I've probably missed it, but I haven't seen you quote from any contemporary scientific literature on the issue, so it's hard to see any contact with the literature "as it stands." Rather, you quote (via a secondary source) a sentence from a 33 year old rebutted letter.

I have recently learned of the competing terms "quote mining" and "literature bluffing" to refer to various tactics allegedly used by opponents in this debate.

This example isn't literature bluffing, since it shows no contact with the recent literature. But it's sure quote mining.

I think this is a common rhetorical tactic of creationists: take a sentence, quote it out of context, and then circulate it -- it's a game of "telephone" or what the British sometimes call "Chinese whispers." What it is not is a responsible use of sources.

Again, I'm pointing out something very specific about the rhetoric of this debate.

--------------"I am not currently proving that objective morality is true. I did that a long time ago and you missed it." -- StephenB

As one who makes his living in the arts, I have no idea what sal's response had to do with anything, let alone your comment.

Sal strikes me as that undergrad, who immediately after listening to some lecture, sits in the cafeteria discussing how the State of Missouri can easily secede from the union and become an independent country.

If you are making judgement based on the rhetorical form I used, that can only have traction if I used an invalid illogical rhetorical construct. The more important question is whether the math, physics, and chemistry are correct when argued from first principles.

Tiggy could not refute the math. Heck, he couldn't even do it.

Speaking of not being able to understand or do math, one can check out Sal blithering on about the TSPGRID example and "omega". Here's my response to Sal's rant...

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Sal,

Yes, that is amusing. Wrong again, but amusing.

As to definitions, I have repeatedly made the point that what CSI is depends upon how it is recognized, which is a property (allegedly) of the math Dembski has given. The “physical/conceptual” text is a descriptive interpretation of what the math defines. It is not, itself, the definition. We addressed the math. We didn’t address every handwaving description Dembski wrote.

As to “omega”, Sal is utterly confused. There are two different uses of “omega” in Dembski’s stuff. In The Design Inference, “omega” refers to “probabilistic resources”, a mapping function that yields “saturated” probabilities and events. TSPGRID doesn’t change “omega”_TDI, contrary to Sal’s claim. In No Free Lunch, “omega” is the “reference class of possible events”. TSPGRID is incapable of “increasing omega” by its operation.

Dembski discusses calculation of “omega” on p.52 of NFL. There, he gives the example of a six-sided die rolled 6,000,000 times. His “omega” for this “event” is “all 6-tuples of nonnegative integers that sum to 6,000,000”. In other words, “omega” includes every possible way that one could roll a die 6,000,000 times. In other equations, if one rolls an n-sided die k time, “omega” is k*n. (This is for the case in which only the distribution of rolls matters, which is the context of Dembski’s example, and not the sequence of rolls. For a sequence of die rolls, “omega” becomes n^k.)

As for the Sal’s claim that TSPGRID “increases omega as it outputs data”, that’s just silly. One does have to take into account the number of runs of TSPGRID, just as Sal takes into account the number of coins in his idee fixe. Sal’s objection to TSPGRID is exactly the same as objecting to coin-stacking on the grounds that he “increases omega as he adds coins”.

Sal says that we didn’t give “omega” for TSPGRID. This is literally true, but we do expect some minimal competence from our readers. The “omega”_NFL for TSPGRID with 4n^2 nodes run k times stated in the same way as Dembski’s dice example is “all (4n^2)!-tuples of nonnegative integers that sum to k”, or, more simply, k*(4n^2)! as anyone with a clue should be able to work out from the information that we gave. If you change n or k, you get a different “omega”, just as you get a different “omega” if you stack dice instead of coins, or stack a different number of dice or coins. Once n and k are fixed, as in some specific instance of one or more runs of TSPGRID to be analyzed as an “event” in Dembski’s parlance, “omega” is fixed as well.

So Sal’s random charge of “error” here is just as amusingly inept as his previous outings. It seems that Sal is not well acquainted with Dembski’s work, as “omega” is not all that mysterious. I suspect that Sal “knows” that the TSPGRID example just “has” to be wrong, therefore, any scattershot objection made will do. But if TSPGRID were actually wrong, and Sal were actually capable of analyzing it, he would have come up with a valid objection in the first place, and not have had to resort to flinging any odd objection at hand and hoping something sticks. So far there has been the “a deterministic version of TSPGRID doesn’t output CSI!” objection (which is why TSPGRID is non-deterministic), the “TSPGRID doesn’t provide PHYSICAL information!” objection (though several of Dembski’s own examples share this “error” and a run of TSPGRID or any other algorithm certainly is physical), and now the “you didn’t say what Omega was!” objection (where “omega” is easily calculated given the information we provided).

But I guess I will have to make do with amusement at further instances of random objections.